Chapter 25 - Good and Evil

When the kids were distressed, sick, or injured, Martha slept in the living room.

It made sense for Clark. He had a tendency to wander out into the living room when he couldn't sleep. It didn't make nearly as much sense for Lex, because it would be easier to hear him stir in bed from upstairs, and he didn't usually go down into the living room if he couldn't sleep. Nevertheless, Martha slept in the living room the night after Lex came home from the hospital. If anything was off and he or Clark came downstairs, she'd be there. And if Lex was stirring in bed, from nightmares, Jonathan would still hear him. Jonathan was better equipped to deal with Lex's fear, and if Martha heard them talking and felt they needed another person, she could always go up there.

More than anything, though, it was habit. She felt better sleeping lightly in the living room when she was worried about the kids. And she had told Lex that she was in that habit, so if he needed her, he knew exactly where to go.

But the days of late had been exhausting. She slept deeper than she had in awhile. Later, she would come to realize she'd missed footsteps passing through the kitchen several times that night.

The sound of a car engine awoke her.

Martha jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Lex was pulling away.

She almost ran after him, but he'd driven away before she could make it to the door. The light was on in the barn; she ran there instead.

Clark was there, pacing, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. He jumped in surprise when he saw her. "How long have you been there?"

"I just saw Lex pull out. Where's he going?"

"It's all my fault, Mom."

"Clark..." She took his arm and waited until he looked into her eyes. "Talk to me. What's going on?"

He took a deep breath. "I messed up. I really, really messed up. I was just trying to help Lex, his darkness took over after he killed Lionel and he threatened me and hurt me with kryptonite. When he was in his coma, I thought, this could be a chance to fix things, you know? So I found some black kryptonite and electrocuted him with it, because Chloe said there were rumors that it might turn people from evil to good, but it didn't. It just split him into two halves, so now his darkness is like this clone that I locked up in the mansion, and now he's going to deal with it…"

Martha's mind spun. She didn't even know where to begin.

This had to be some kind of dream. Some kind of misunderstanding, some kind of mistake. For starters, Clark would never do all those things. Sure, he had been driven to some pretty stupid decisions through desperation, but she was sure he had learned his lesson about communicating with his family after the incident with Metropolis. He had absolutely no reason to be keeping so many secrets from his parents, or taking so many risks.

And how had kryptonite electrocution caused an evil clone to be created? She had heard of kryptonite doing a lot of strange things, but that was a new one. In some ways, maybe that would make mediation easier between the his two sides.

But she focused on the only thing that mattered in this moment: "Deal with him how?"

Clark swallowed. "I don't...I think he's gonna kill him."

Martha's heart dropped into her stomach. She was going to lose her son. And all because he was still afraid of the darkness.

She knew why Lex wanted to get rid of that half of himself. But even if there was no risk, even if he could kill his other half once and for all, she wouldn't have wanted him to do it. That other half of him was still half of her son; she loved all of him. And she wasn't sure that the divide between darkness and light was as clear-cut as Lex liked to believe. The past month had shown her that, as he had struggled with difficult moral questions and rebelled against his parents a little more than usual.

She had to talk to him.

Martha turned to leave the barn, and Clark called after her, "Mom, am I in trouble?"

"More than you've ever been," she called back, and she ran back to the house for her keys.


Lex had dreamed for years about the day he might defeat his darkness.

He never dreamed that it would be like this.

His arms trembled a little as he picked up the handgun from his weapon storage room. His parents didn't know that he even had these. He really should've told them, in case things ever got bad with his darkness, but it didn't matter now.

He made his way down to the Room of Obsession. Along the way, he wonder how Clark had managed to lock the door without a key. The answer was obvious when he looked down at the door knob. He had literally jammed it in the place, making it impossible for any human to get into or out of the room—not without a crowbar or something. Lex had to double back to the weapons room, and by that time, he was starting to get awfully winded. The gunshot wound was taking more of a toll than he had thought. At least his other half would have the same problem.

It took him more than a minute to unbend the door knob, and even after that, the lock mechanism was completely destroyed. He ended up having to hack away at the entire thing to get the door open.

He flipped on the light in the room.

His other half smirked up at him, still tied on the floor in the empty room. "I wondered when I'd be seeing you."

Lex had had every intention of shooting his other self on sight. He knew himself well enough to know that it was better not to allow him any leeway to try to talk his way out of this. But aside from the knowledge that he himself might drop dead the moment he pulled the trigger and took the life of his other half, it was more than a little eerie to be standing in the presence of himself.

"Hey, remember the first time we were in this room?" his other self asked. "Dad told us not to play down here, but I whispered in your ear to do it anyway?"

Lex swallowed, pacing. "The door blew shut, locking me in. No one could hear me."

"You were so afraid. A scared, trembling child. I hated you for that."

"Not as much as I hate you."

His clone's smile faded suddenly. "I've always wondered about that. Here I am, the one you call your darkness, the evil one. And yet here you are, more full of hatred than I could ever be."

Lex pushed aside the thought that his darkness had a point. "And you call me your weakness. But the Kents give me more strength than anything ever has."

"You're about to risk your life to kill me. That's weakness, Lex."

"Sacrifice isn't weakness."

The bound man laughed, and the laughter chilled Lex's bones. "Do it, then. Kill me."

Lex raised and cocked the gun.

No backing down now.


Martha's heart rate sped up the entire time she was driving toward the mansion.

Part of her thought she should've talked Clark into going instead. Clark could physically stop Lex from doing anything rash. But she was sure she was the only one who could talk him into making a better choice, in the short and long term. She had to try.

But what if she was wrong? What if she was too late? What if he was already lying dead in a pool of his own blood…

She drove faster and faster through the night, narrowly avoiding skidding out on a few turns. She pulled up to the mansion, and the night security didn't hesitate to let her in.

Martha didn't know exactly where her son would be. But she knew her way around the mansion pretty well, and she knew about the spaces where her son had never invited her. She followed her gut.

She turned around a hallway, and saw an open door a few paces down, with a crowbar lying beside it. She could hear muffled voices from inside the room.

Martha walked at first, then she ran, then she sprinted.

She didn't stop when she reached the doorway and found one half of her son aiming a gun at the other.

"No!" she cried, and without even thinking about it, she jumped in front of the gun.